Late night bites at ShuRaku Sake Bar & Bistro

Dropped by ShuRaku Friday night after Nordstrom closed on me at a ridiculously early 9pm. Although ShuRaku looked empty from the outside, it was surprisingly busy inside, especially for after 9pm.

I think our server was a manager or something because I later saw her giving instructions to another server. In any case, all staff seemed very attentive and prompt to help or execute requests.

I was there with a friend just for a late-night snack and we ordered just three things.

Ei-Hire ($4.50) Dried and barbecued sting ray fin

• This was on the special menu of the day, not in the regular menu.
• Winner! This turned out to be very thin slices of fish. Slightly sweet, not very fishy. Chewy but not insanely so. Strangely tasty because of the mild sweetness and fun to eat because of the chewiness.
• Net portion of maybe a half cup is less than appetizer-sized. Still, worth a try.

Chopped Scallop Maki Sushi ($4.95) With tobiko (fish roe) and mayo

• Really boring. You get exactly what you ordered--diced raw scallop in some kind of sauce, a sprinkle of fish roe, and rolled in sushi rice. Quite a lot of sushi rice actually. About half the inside of the sushi roll was rice.
• Boring tasting unless you like raw scallop I guess. But it's a “normal” non-premium roll so what can you really expect?

Ebi-Mozza Harumaki ($6.50) エビチーズ春巻き Deep-fried spring roll with shrimp, mozzarella cheese, and shiitake mushrooms. Served with chili aurora sauce.

• Turned out surprisingly boring. Mostly I tasted mozzarella although I could clearly locate shrimp and diced mushroom.
• The sweet aurora sauce with which it had been drizzled was really decent though, and helped make the bed of deep fried vermicelli more palatable.
• If you order this be sure to get a spoon to help with the noodles.

Genmai Tea ($2.80)

• Small pot with possibly unlimited refills of hot water.  When we both asked for tea, instead of bringing another pot she simply brought another cup to share the pot, resulting in only a single order of tea on the bill. Nice!

Bonus points for service (or maybe more properly, our server). Some servers speak fluent English (heck, one of the guys was caucasian), unlike some sushi places where everyone's so Japanese that sometimes it's like they were imported fresh to cater to the local Japanese populace, and therefore have a frustrating level of ESL.